Earlier Thursday, Donald Trump put his special brand of diplomacy on display when he told Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to skip their meeting in Washington next week if he wasn’t going to foot the multi-billion dollar bill for Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” on the U.S.-Mexico border. To which Peña Nieto turned around and said sure, great idea, and cancelled. The incident was unfortunate for a number of reasons, including the fact that it wasn’t a great way to kick off relations with our neighbors to the south, and that it further underscores the unsettling possibility that the 45th president of the United States is living in some kind of alternate reality. It was also pretty unfortunate for Mexico’s currency, which fell off a cliff thanks to the White House being inhabited by a capricious five-year-old boy trapped in the body of a 70-year-old man. “Yesterday's conciliatory tone has been shattered by those tweets," Andres Jaime, a Barclays strategist, told CNBC. “It's a reversal from yesterday’s optimism that this was going to go smoother than initially thought ... In the meantime, [the peso is] going to remain under pressure.”

The good news is it appears the administration is working quickly to repair the damage done by today‘s dust-up:

Yes, the Trump administration responded to the (ahem) Mexican standoff by calling for a 20 percent tariff on Mexican goods, which seems like it would result in Americans, not Mexico, paying for the wall, but who’s counting? White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says the import tax would raise $10 billion a year, presumably from a cross section of the nation’s Corona drinkers and avocado consumers.

Minutes later, Spicer tried to clarify that Trump isn’t necessarily proposing a 20 percent, but that it is an option that is being considered. What Trump, self-proclaimed dealmaker, might call a “negotiating tactic.” Stay tuned.

After postponing its initial public offering twice last year thanks to a certain presidential candidate who had only reasonable, measured things to say about Mexico, tequila maker Jose Cuervo is doing the damn thing, border wall and import tax talk be damned. Per Reuters:

Jose Cuervo will seek to raise more than $700 million in an initial public offering, with Singapore's Temasek Holdings Ltd. taking 20 percent of the offer, an investor presentation revealed on Wednesday. Jose Cuervo will offer 476.6 million shares, priced at between 30 to 34 pesos per share, in its delayed February 8 initial public offering, according to the presentation. >In a previous IPO filing with regulators, Jose Cuervo warned that the U.S. election could lead to renegotiation of trade deals, which could have a serious impact on its business.

Wilbur Ross

During his inaugural address, Donald Trump vowed that in his four years in office, he would stand up for “the forgotten men and women of our country” and put “the establishment” on notice. He did so flanked by cabinet appointees and donors worth well over $65 billion. Among the inner circle Trump has assembled to run the government is Wilbur Ross, our new secretary of commerce-designate, who is worth approximately $2.5 billion. Of course, being rich is not a bad thing in and of itself, but some people, who take issue with hypocrisy also have a problem with the idea that Ross got rich off the very things he will likely rail against on behalf of his new boss. So, just for kicks, let’s take a look at how Ross amassed that wealth, shall we? Per Bloomberg’s Max Abelson:

Now loudly for free trade, Ross began embracing countries he’d recently accused of systematically destroying America. His textile company announced that it was building a plant in China, a complex in Vietnam, and an 850-worker facility in Nicaragua that drew the country’s president to the opening ceremony. In September 2008, Ross’s private equity firm announced a joint venture with a subsidiary of China’s largest state-owned power producer. Ross called it “living proof of the financial and intellectual interconnectedness of two of the world’s great powers.” Three years later, he and the sovereign fund China Investment Corp. invested in a shipping deal together. “I think that it’s total political nonsense, all the China bashing,” Ross said at the time. “The trade deficit we have with the rest of the world is almost equal to the trade deficit we have with China, so what’s the big deal about China?”

It proved a big deal to Trump, of course. “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country,” the then-candidate said at an Indiana rally last spring. A few months later, Ross publicly reversed himself on this issue, too. “China has used a potent arsenal of unfair trade practices to shut over 70,000 American factories and kick millions of American workers to the curb,” he wrote with the economist Peter Navarro in an August op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In a September white paper for the campaign, they called China the “biggest cheater in the world,” blaming the U.S. trade deficit on a flood of subsidized imports. Ross also repudiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement he’d endorsed in 2015. He told senators in January that his feelings changed when he delved into details.

Anyway, the good news is that Ross will likely figure out a way to use his position to grow his pile of cash even bigger. “All I know is that here’s a guy who’s in to make money,” his friend and fellow billionaire Ronald Laudertold Bloomberg.

Among those terrified by the increasingly Trumpian state of the world, there exists a subset that, while concerned, is at least taking comfort in the fact that their portfolios are doing great. But temper that enthusiasm! According to former Fed governor Randy Kroszner, this rally could end quicker than you can say, “Oh God, what did he do now?”

“I think there are very high expectations for executions on some of the economic parts of the program, cutting taxes, trying to rationalize their taxes to bring some of the $2 trillion trapped offshore to onshore, deregulation,” he said. “And these things, I think, are considered positive by most market participants. And if somehow there's a slip in execution that's the thing that will cause the markets to pause,” the former Fed governor stated.